Author: Jeremy Cherfas

Posted on

Round and round the money goes

There’s something very weird about this story, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. According to a press release from the University of Texas at Austin, researchers there have just been given USD 4.6 million “to study impact of climate change on potential biofuel source”. The potential biofuel source is switchgrass, which may, one-day, provide useful amounts of ethanol. But hang on. The reason switchgrass is suddenly interesting is that is could substitute for petroleum. And that’s a good idea because it might slow the emission of greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide. So they’re going to study how climate change affects switchgrass, which may alter climate change, which may change the use of switchgrass?

My head’s reeling. Someone help me.

Actually, it’s not really about the impact of climate change. That’s a big part of the headline and a small part of the study, which is more about how different switchgrass varieties perform under different conditions, especially on the more marginal land that is most likely to be used for growing biofuels. The researchers will also be asking how the different varieties respond to the different growing conditions that are predicted under different climate change scenarios.

Oh no, the spinning sensation, it’s starting again.

Posted on

Mo’ better tuber news

Apropos Rhizowen’s hymn to “the connection between a convolvulaceous bearing crop, a folk-blues artist and a cetacean” which we nibbled a couple of days ago, news of further consternation in the tuberous ranks. The National Agricultural Library of the USDA, no less, riffs on a poem called Yam, by Ted Kooser. ((Oh dear. See comment below. My apologies to Ted Kooser, Bruce Guernsey and especially Mary Ann Leonard, for making a complete mess of this post.)) Mary Ann Leonard uses it to sort her sweet potatoes from her yams, and both from Irish potatoes, which we all know aren’t from Ireland. Fun.

Posted on

Geo mashup artist needed

Luigi mentioned the UK Science’s Museum’s interactive map on climate change and crops. Elsewhere, ((Yes, there is life outside agro.agro.biodiver.se.)) he draws attention to maps of diabetes around the world. Now I find a map of “small farms” in the US.

What I want, obviously, is a graphic that will show me any relationships between the prevalence of small farms and diabetes, over time, corrected for access to the internet, obviously, and for the whole world. Not a lot to ask, is it? Oh, and I can’t find diabetes at Gapminder World.

Posted on

Bee story with a sting in its tail

We’ve been a bit forgetful lately, not submitting items to Scientia Pro Publica, one of the most popular science blog carnivals around. But that doesn’t mean we’ve ignored the latest edition, at Genetic Inference. There’s a bunch of stuff there on climate change, and a link to a long post on David Roubik’s 17-year quest to understand the impact of African Killer Bees.

We nibbled Science Daily’s take on the original scientific paper, but on an amazingly busy day. So it is good to see Greg Laden take a somewhat longer view. To the press release, which he thoughtfully copies, Laden adds the observation that “the so called “African Killer Bees” are nothing other than the wild version of the honey bee,” and points out that people have a hard time relating loving, gentle European honey bees to these killers out of Africa’s dark heart. The interbreeding of wild and domesticated honeybees restored some aggression to domestic stocks and in the process of “Africanizing” them also boosted their honey-gathering abilities.

Roubik’s study concluded that although there have been swings in populations of various bee species, pollination has not suffered. Local bees, sometimes outcompeted by Africanized honeybees, are finding other flowers to sustain them. Most of the local plants are still doing fine, and some that are favoured by local bee species have even spread. But Roubik also sounded a cautionary note that hinges on the insurance value of plant biodiversity.

Basically we’re seeing ‘scramble competition’ as bees replace a lost source of pollen with pollen from a related plant species that has a similar flowering peak–in less-biodiverse, unprotected areas, bees would not have the same range of options to turn to.

That’s crucial. Roubik studied bees in “Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve — a vast area of mature tropical rainforest in Quintana Roo state on the Mexican Yucatan”. With fewer flower species among which to choose, local bees might not do so well. On the other hand, if the flower species aren’t there, they won’t suffer from the loss of local bees.